In my group we use a suite of house rules to encourage the use of something other than dual-wielding. We have been using these for a year or so now and are pretty happy with how it has worked out. Mostly.

Firstly, I should say that we *are* happy with how they are working - there is a goodly amount of dual wielding and also, um, singular wielding, I guess. I think I am calling that 'mono wielding' from now on. What we are less happy with is that there are still a few weapons that almost noone is using. Those weapons are:

Flail

Morning star

Sword

Spear

Pretty much noone uses the chain weapons because the strength bonus only lasts for the first round and then after that they are just a stick. Less than a stick actually, because at least a stick would still have Concussion. Noone uses the sword except for people that can't wear armour and can't use Dwarf Axes. Granted, sometimes people will buy one for their captain for flavour reasons or because the model happens to have one, but still, we feel they *should* be more popular than they are.

Spears *used* to be the king. Indeed, back in the bad old days of vanilla mordheim they were the prime weapon. Anyone dual-wielding would be doing so with a spear and another one-handed weapon, most likely either a club or (because we didn't know any better) a sword.

These days, because of the Strike First rules they are much more diminished. Too much, I would say, because now noone takes them at all, except for Skaven and Elves. We are not too unhappy with the toning down though, because we have often thought that spears were far too expensive. 10 gold for a stick with a dagger on the end was too much, but back then the ability of Strikes First was worth too much to suggest lowering the price.

Anyway, for context, the full list of house rules we use are:

Armour is half-price except shields, helms, and toughened leathers.

Armour suits grant a base-save against physical serious injury.

We use the optional crit tables but all 'and ignores armour saves' sections are removed. Results that are *only* 'ignores armour saves remain.

Shields and bucklers grant an additional +1 armour save in close combat.

Gromril counts as heavy armour, Ithilmar counts as light armour.

Dual Wielding incurs a -1 to hit penalty on all attacks.

New Combat skill: Dual Wielder: Removes penalty for dual wielding

Some ideas we have been kicking around now for a while now to help the less popular weapons are as follows. We might use some, none, or possibly even all of these (but probabaly not all). This list is:

Parry is now a flat 5+ save. You still only get one, though. The relevant dwarf skills will give +1 and an additional attempt as per usual.

We recently lowered the cost of the morningstar to 10 GC in our group. Otherwise it stays the same. Now it costs the same as a halberd, only get +1S in the first round, but disallow parry and lets you use a shield. I think it's still worse than a halberd, but took one since I picked up some awesome old Disciples of the Red Redemption models with morningstars.